“Women ruled the costume contest at the third annual Sci Fi Fantasy Fest at the Hoover Public Library Saturday night.

Jessica Collier of Gadsden walked away with first place among the 20 contestants, portraying the Sombra character from the Overwatch video game.

Second place went to Blythe Stovall of Trussville (dressed as Merida from the “Brave” movie, with a dose of Mel Gibson’s William Wallace character in “Braveheart.”)

Hoover’s own Illissa McGowin came in third, sporting a costume from another Overwatch character called the Widowmaker.

The judges picked three others as “judges’ choice” selections. One was Collier’s father, Terry Collier, who portrayed Negan from “The Walking Dead.” The other two were Suzanne Crowson of Gardendale, dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West in “Wicked,” and Ezekiel Addams of Columbiana, dressed as Javar from “Aladdin.”

…

The library’s Sci Fi Fantasy Fest is a three-day event that began Friday and ends Sunday. It includes sessions on gaming, TV and media, Star Wars, Star Trek, cosplay, writing, comics and the paranormal.

In the first two days, this year’s festival already has drawn a bigger crowd than last year, when more than 2,100 people came, chairwoman Krysten Griffin said. An estimate was not yet available and would need to come from the library’s automatic people counters, she said.

Some of the most popular aspects of the festival so far have been the prop building contest, live Dungeons and Dragons play, open board game play at the Hoover Senior Center, and a passionate debate about whether the Harry Potter series is better than the Star Wars series, Griffin said.

Saturday also featured John Anderson, an actor and comedian from Birmingham who landed a role as a ravager in the recently released “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” Anderson also appeared in “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” “The Case for Christ,” “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” “MacGyver,” “Being Mary Jane” and Tyler Perry’s “Too Close to Home.”

Activities on Sunday go from 2 to 6 p.m. and include two workshops at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on how to make a sheet of chainmaille. Chainmaille is a type of armour made of small metal rings linked together in a pattern to form a mesh-like material. The cost is $10 per person. Each participant will receive pliers and steel rings to make one sheet of chainmaille. Space is limited.

Other Sunday activities include open gaming, a breakout room, an Artemis Spaceship bridge simulator, a science fiction double feature of “It Came From Outer Space” and “Forbidden Planet” in the Hoover Library Theater, a session on epic failure sci-fi shows that never took off, and sessions related to Star Trek and Star Wars. Admission is free, except for the chainmaille workshops.”